Leak of the Week

Thanks to an overdue visit to the Billabong, I've just read this interesting opinion piece by Andrew Bolt in Monday's Hun, and this much more interesting transcript of Andrew Wilkie's evidence before Westminster's Foreign Affairs Committee. It's worth taking the time to read the transcript: as well as Wilkie's testimony, it includes that of Ibrahim Al-Marashi, author of the plagiarised thesis that was included in the "dodgy dossier". The Professor has already posted his favourite extract from Mr Al-Marashi's testimony - here are a couple of mine:

Q666 Sir John Stanley: As has been widely reported, the Government has chosen to make an apology to the heads of the intelligence agencies for producing a document which purported to have some degree of authority from themselves when that was not the case, and has provided an assurance that that will not happen again in the future. Has the Government made any expression of regret or apology to you for the plagiarisation of your thesis?

Mr al-Marashi: I have never been contacted directly, either by phone call nor in writing, since February 2003 up to the present.

Q667 Sir John Stanley: Do you think you might be owed an apology?

Mr al-Marashi: I think the least they could do is owe me an apology.

Q668 Chairman: Can we now apologise for them?

Mr al-Marashi: The time is quite past but I would have to say that the biggest fear I had out of this whole story breaking out was that I am an Iraqi myself and when I wrote this article I did not think it would get much of a circulation, maybe 5,000 people at the most, people in the Middle East academic community. What the events have done to me around February and March was that basically they connected me to the British case for going to war and, having relatives in Iraq with my last name connected to me in the UK would have been disastrous for them. I have already lost two relatives to the Saddam regime. Any connection now between me and the UK Government and the case for going to war would have had a disastrous effect on my family back home. That was my biggest regret out of this entire affair. Given the personal stress I have gone through, I think the least they could have done was offer me an apology.

Q669 Sir John Stanley: Were there any reprisals made against any of the members of your family in the period between the publication of the "dodgy dossier" and the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime?

Mr al-Marashi: I have not been able to establish contact with my family. I cannot say 100 per cent. In fact, I was intending to go back to find out the fate of my family, but I cannot say I am 100 per cent sure if there were reprisals. Given the fact that my family was politically suspect in the past, it is likely that they could have been suspect or there could have been reprisals. There is always that possibility.

Mr al-Marashi also identifies a few incompetent [according to committee chair Donald Anderson] alterations to his original paper:

Again, from the first bullet from "Its internal activities include ...", "spying" - I used the term "monitoring". I guess there is a thin line between those two words but I tried to use more neutral language. The key modification made was in the second section, "Its external activities include ..." - "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes", where I believe I used, "aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes". There is a big difference between "opposition groups" and "terrorist organisations". I was always one to believe that the link between Iraqi intelligence and terrorist organisations may have been quite active in the past but links between Iraq's security apparatus and terrorist organisations - there has not been evidence that there has been strong co-operation in the last decade, nor has there been strong evidence of Iraqi co-operation with al-Qaeda. By changing it to this word you are kind of distorting the intent, that is, "supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes" makes one infer that they could be supporting, let us say, groups like al-Qaeda. That is one key example of modifying the text. There are other examples where they not only plagiarised but they put it in the wrong place ...

But that's enough of that - you can read the rest for yourselves. Let's turn to Andrew Bolt's article:

ANDREW Wilkie sells himself as the spy who couldn't be fooled over Iraq.

He's the one spook who didn't buy what he calls the Howard Government's "fairytale" and "exaggerations" about the threat of Saddam Hussein.

But when I go through the only secret report that Wilkie ever wrote about Iraq as an Office of National Assessments analyst, I wonder just who fell for a "fairytale".

... [my emphasis]

Curiously, a good half hour of imaginative googling this morning failed to turn up any other analysis or comment based on going through "the only secret report that Wilkie ever wrote about Iraq". Still, now that it's been let out into the public domain via Andrew Bolt (and possibly other journos I wasn't able to track down), maybe the Office of National Assessment could do the right thing by us all and put it up on their web-site. After all, now that it's appeared in the Hun it's hardly secret any more, is it?

The Most Boring Town in the USA

This is a typical police report from Arlington Massachusetts:

At 11:18 am, a woman reported that a teenager groped her buttocks on the minuteman bike trail and fled toward Lexington

... And She Won't Be Singing Nessun Dorma

Chris Sheil at Troppo Armadillo has another update on the Windschuttle saga, Windschuttle and the Fat Lady with a link to this assessment of Keith's work by historian Stuart MacIntyre. If it weren't mixing an already overstretched metaphor, I'd say that MacIntyre not only hoists Windschuttle by his own petard - he does a good job of drawing and quartering him too. As Chris says:

While clearly there are many words still to be spent on this business, my feeling is that the Fat Lady may as well begin clearing her throat.

If you know any suitable arias for the Fat Lady to sing, please nominate them in the comments box. Or over at Troppo. (At the risk of blowing my smart-arse cred, I don't know enough about opera to suggest any myself).

Days of Our Dole

The ABC, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald all reported yesterday on a new study by the University of Melbourne's Centre for Public Policy, showing that people on the dole are so shagged out from jumping through the "Mutual Obligation" hoops that they don't have the energy left to find work.

On a more cheerful note, there's this report from The Age:

People who rack up welfare debts will not have their credit ratings affected when Centrelink puts their case into the hands of a debt collection agency.

Children and Youth Affairs Minister Larry Anthony has assured parliament that because Centrelink is not a credit provider, information about Centrelink debts can not be collected by credit reference agencies.

He was responding to a question on notice from Labor MP Con Sciacca.

So, if Centrelink's debt collectors take you through the Judgement Debt Recovery process, leading to a sheriff's auction of of your domestic whitegoods at laughably low prices, never mind. You'll be able to buy a new fridge on the Visa Card you'll be able to get with your impeccable credit rating.

Democracy Reprieved?

AM was a treat this morning: the Government's ASIO Bill has been pulled yet again, after Bob Brown raised the question of whether the Bill would enable ASIO to detain witnesses indefinitely by applying for rolling warrants. Brown's proposed amendment - which would require that those helping ASIO with their inquiries be either charged or released at the end of the seven day interrogation - struck me as a sensible one. This has forced the Government back into negotiations with labor, much to the annoyance of Attorney General Daryl "I don't know much about legislation but I know what I like" Williams. Williams now faces the challenge of coming up with workable provisions which prevent ASIO from using the Bill in the way Brown suggests it might.

On the other hand, he could just drop the idea - didn't he tell us that the security services would rather work with their existing powers than be given new powers that they couldn't actually use in practice. Sadly, I haven't been able to track down that quote, but here's a beaut from AM on 11 December last year:

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Finally, the Senate's started amending your ASIO Bill, will you accept the changes that the Senate makes? The minor parties and Labor all say that what they're doing is putting in safeguards that the legal fraternity has been calling for.

DARYL WILLIAMS: Well, what I can say is that the amendments that the Labor Party, the Democrats and the Greens are making to the Bill are converting it from being a Government Bill into being a Labor Party Bill. And the Labor Party is not demonstrating a commitment to protecting the community because they're aligning themselves with the Democrats and the Greens who are going to vote against the Bill.

Elsewhere The Age reports that the Government's proposed changes to media ownership laws may be in doubt. Over at News Limited, they're of a different opinion, reporting that the legislation is only one vote away from being passed. Apparently, all Richard Alston has to do is get Brian Harradine onside. Oddly, a ten minute Google session has turned up nothing on the subject at any of News Limited's individual newspaper sites. Media diversity is wonderful, isn't it?

Update: in lieu of a long post of the entire exchange between Senator Brown and Senator Ellison, you can find it on page 8 of the PDF file of yesterday's Senate Hansard

Reading Matters

Halfway through Edvard Radzinksy's Stalin, and it's a day overdue. Library policy is not to renew overdue books, so now it's going to be months before I find out how The Boss responded to all of Bukharin's doomed pleas for clemency from his prison cell. Bugger!

In view of certain snippy comments I've had about previous books read, I've decided that in future I'm sticking to science fiction, fantasy or, failing those options, the children's section. I've already noticed a couple of promising entries in the library's on-line catalogue; Harry Potter in the Garden of Delights and Where's Wally's Willy? Some light reading will make a pleasant change. So will being able to return books during library opening hours, rather than sneaking round at night to drop them through the after hours return slot, so that you can pretend the damage to the bindings was caused by all the other books that got dumped in on top of your borrowings.

Meanwhile, for those who might be interested in whether Hannah Arendt's treatment of Rudolph Kastner in Eichmann in Jerusalem was fair, there's this on-line article which gives the most balanced account of the "Kastner Trial" I could google up. I'd write more, but I'm not in a particularly Den Bestean mood right now.

Bloody Blogger!

This One's for Stew

Stewart Kelly invites visitors to click on www.powergenitalia.com (but first you should try to guess what the site's about). After that, you might want to try www.onan.com

Argumentum Pedis Transfixus

John Ray has an interesting post on Left vs Right in the Tudor era:

[Cecil's] [Left] complacent eagerness to sacrifice the household goods of poor folk was backed by Bacon. The poor ought to be taxed as heavily as the rich: because, as he quoted in Latin, it was a right and ‘sweet course to pull together in an equal yoke'.

This smug hypocrisy brought Ralegh [Right] to his feet. `Call you this an equal yoke, when a poor man pays as much as a rich? His estate may be no better than he is assessed at, while our estates are entered as £30 or £40 in the Queen's books -- not the hundredth part of our wealth!' His outrageous frankness over this unfair advantage given to his own class, shocked his opponents. His final blow demolished them: 'It is neither sweet nor equal.'

As I say, it's interesting, because I recall Raleigh's objections to Cecil being raised in modern times against Margaret Thatcher's Poll Tax and Victorian Treasurer Alan Stockdale's fixed rate property tax. By the Left.

Alarmed but not Alert(?)

Pursuing my morbid fascination with star committee performer Seantor Santo Santoro, I came across this fascinating little exchange from yesterday's Question Time in the Senate:

Senator SANTORO (2.08 p.m.): My question is to the Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Alston. Will the minister inform the Senate of the next steps in the development of the Prime Minister’s proposed constitutional reform to ensure that elected governments’ efforts to act in the national interest are not unreasonably obstructed by the Senate? What evidence is there that this is a matter that needs to be urgently addressed?

Senator ALSTON: It is a very important question that Senator Santoro has asked, and the Prime Minister’s address to the Liberal Party convention a couple of weekends back really brought into focus what has been an ongoing problem with the Senate.

In many ways, the media and others get it wrong because it is not really the Senate that is opposed; it is Labor that is opposed. What the Prime Minister’s proposal involves is a sensible proposition supported by Gough Whitlam - in fact, proposed by Gough Whitlam amongst others - which would allow for a joint sitting of the parliament to be held when important legislation is twice rejected during the term of the parliament. There have been a number of constructive suggestions made about the proposal. Certainly Mr Lavarch has put something on the table which is well worth further consideration.

The next step in this process is to have a discussion paper circulated for public comment. We very much expect that we will get some sensible contributions, but that has to be against the background of understanding why these sorts of proposals need to be seriously considered. It is essentially because, whenever it comes to serious legislation, the ‘just say no’ party takes its orders from its trade union masters and blocks it in principle - if it ever had any principles - because that is what it is about.

When John Howard's proposal was first mooted the BlogGeist (or at least the leftist and moderate centrist portions of the BlogGeist) was pretty dismissive of the idea: John Howard was merely flying another kite and, if it came to a referendum, he'd find his string cut anyway (as happened with his comfortable and relaxed pre-amble to the Constitution). But, on the face of it, Senator Santoro's Dorothy Dixer, and Senator Alston's reply indicate that the Government is prepared to pursue this particular "reform" fairly seriously.

I don't think this should be treated as yet another attempt to intimidate the Senate and the Opposition: the Government's main political tactic there is to keep on bunging up the double dissolution triggers. This looks like a seriously intended proposal, aimed at bringing the Senate to heel [permanently]. And, while the Government argues that this is in the long term national interest, Senator Alston's remarks make it pretty clear which interests actually come first: the Government's short and medium term political interests.

Right now, there are two serious questions that need to be asked:

Just where the hell is this Government taking this country?

Do we really want to go there?

For the Record

A quick calculation shows that today is the 187th day since the Government's ASIO Bill was rejected by Parliament. That's a little over half a year that our security agencies have managed to get along and protect us without the bill, which Daryl Williams assured us they would rather not have passed at all than passed in a diluted, unworkable form.

More Puzzlement

Apropos nothing in particular, here's a true story from English mathematician and puzzlist Henry Ernest Dudeney.

In China, during the Boxer Rebellion, a Colonel in the English Army was attending Sunday Service with his wife. When the congregation knelt to pray he fell asleep. He dreamt that he was kneeling before a Chinese executioner who was about to behead him.

At the end of the prayers, his wife resumed her seat and saw that her husband had fallen asleep. To wake him, she tapped him on the back of the neck with her fan. The colonel, taking this for the touch of the executioner's sword, promptly had a heart attack and died.

Sometimes, the human mind plays very strange tricks on itself.

Reading Matters

I finished Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem over the weekend. Regular readers will be pleased to hear that it made it through the reading without being hurled across the room even once. Nor did any more pages get torn off for the purpose of lighting cigarettes from the gas heater. I don't have a gas heater.

I've since moved on to Edvard Radzinsky's Stalin, a fairly weighty book which should offer plenty of upper-body exercise for the dedicated book hurler.

Word of the Day: Privilege

This report in the Melbourne Hun makes interesting reading:

A STATE MP yesterday sought to use parliamentary privilege to have his evidence against a friend thrown out.

Parliamentary secretary for innovation and industry Matt Viney appeared in the County Court as the key witness in a case against Frankston councillor Mark Conroy.

Cr Conroy has appealed against his conviction and $500 fine for divulging confidential information about a shopping centre development to Mr Viney in a September 2001 telephone conversation.

The prosecution case rests on the evidence of Mr Viney, Upper House member for Chelsea Province and Mr Conroy's friend.

After Mr Viney gave evidence against Cr Conroy, Mr Viney's barrister, Barney Cooney, told Judge Fred Davey that his client's evidence should be ruled inadmissible because it fell under parliamentary privilege.

A quick check of the MacQuarie Dictionary suggests that Matt Viney's understanding of parliamentary privilege might be a little eccentric to say the least. The MacQuarie has a fair bit to offer on privilege in general:

1. a right or immunity enjoyed by a person or persons beyond the common advantages of others. 2. a special right or immunity granted to persons in authority or office; a prerogative. 3. a prerogative, advantage, or opportunity enjoyed by someone in a favoured position (as distinguished from a right). 4. a grant to an individual, a company, etc., of a special right or immunity, sometimes in derogation of the common right. 5. the principle or condition of enjoying special rights or immunities. 6. any of the more sacred and vital rights common to all citizens under a modern constitution.

It also runs to a definition of parliamentary privilege:

... the sum of the special rights enjoyed by each house of parliament collectively and by the members of each house individually, necessary for the discharge of the functions of parliament without hindrance and without fear of prosecution.

Finally, there's breach of privilege:

... an abuse of any of the privileges accorded to members of parliament.

Nowhere can I find anything which supports Matt Viney's understanding of parliamentary privilege, which I would render as:

on the parliamentary record but incriminating to a mate and therefore inadmissible in a court of law.

Perhaps Ken Parish or one of the other Oz bloggers with legal expertise might be able to explain where the MacQuarie got it wrong.

From Hansard

(House Hansard, 16 June 2003)

Mr RUDD (2.56 p.m.) — My question is to the Prime Minister and it concerns Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. I ask whether the Prime Minister recalls his statement of 30 May on radio when he said:

... they’ve certainly found and pretty clearly established to the satisfaction of the American agencies, that those trailers, two of them, were production facilities for biological weapons ...

Further, does he recall his statement on radio on 4 June when he referred to:

... those two trailers, which clearly were connected with biological weapons.

Is the Prime Minister now aware of a report in yesterday’s London Observer which said —

Mr Downer interjecting —

Mr RUDD — Settle down, Alex. The report said:

An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs ... but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons.

Does the Prime Minister today still stand by the accuracy of his 30 May and 4 June statements to the Australian people that these two trailers were part of an Iraqi biological weapons program?

Mr HOWARD — I thank the member for Griffith for his question. I assume that the report attributed to the London Observer is of a piece with the report in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning which says the same thing.

Mr Rudd — Only more extensive, Prime Minister.

Mr HOWARD — It sounds as though it says the same thing. As a result of reading that report, I had some investigations made through the Office of National Assessments, and I have been informed as follows.

United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies have concluded that at least one of the three vehicle trailers found in Iraq is a mobile biological weapons production facility and closely matches the description given to the United Nations Security Council in February by the Secretary of State.

Let me take the opportunity of saying this to the member for Griffith and to all members of this House: I, and the government I lead, remain intensely proud of what Australia did in relation to Iraq. I do not in any way retreat from the justification that I provided on behalf of the government for our entry into the war against Iraq. The legal justification for that entry was, of course, the noncompliance by Iraq with UN Security Council resolutions. I also sought — to a lesser degree but, nonetheless, importantly — to justify our involvement in terms of the importance and the centrality of the American alliance.

I note also, relevantly, that yesterday on the Channel 10 program the member for Brand expressed the view that perhaps in the end evidence of weapons of mass destruction would be found, which seems to run a little counter to the cacophony coming from the current frontbench of the Labor Party. I go on to say that I remain confident that the coalition’s investigations will uncover the full extent of Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs. Patience is needed as the process of investigating more than 1,000 suspect sites will take time. It will also require time to encourage the Iraqis involved in the program to come forward.

The intelligence community in Australia was firm in its assessments of Iraq’s WMD status. The Office of National Assessments remains confident in the judgment that there was a WMD capability in Iraq in the lead-up to the war and is continuing to assess the scope and the nature of that capability in the light of post-conflict investigations. Let me repeat: this country did the right thing in joining the Americans in waging war against Saddam Hussein’s regime. Those from the opposition who now seek to denigrate what this government and this country do are, in effect, calling for the restoration of Saddam Hussein as the ruler of Iraq.

Qu(ot)e?

This country did the right thing in joining the Americans in waging war against Saddam Hussein's regime and those members of the Opposition who now seek to denigrate what this government and this country do are in effect calling for the restoration of Saddam Hussein ...

John Howard on opposition calls for an inquiry into that intelligence. Someone should tell him where the plot went to.

Because I Can

Jason Soon at Catallaxy Files posted a link to this "good introduction to the IQ and genetics debate by someone who works in the field and is familiar with the literature" last Wednesday. Try as I might, I can't make head or tail of it, although it does make some rather worrying claims about how researchers in the field of race & IQ feel that they must resort to various forms of subterfuge in order to get research grants out of politically correct academia. More puzzling is, that though the post argues (very strongly) for a link between genetics (and implicitly race) and IQ, the links that I've followed all lead to on-line articles about the relationship between genetics and physiology.

On the whole, I'm not inclined to take it too seriously, especially after reading this:

... when push comes to shove, suddenly the sophistry fails and it becomes all-important to find someone of the same ethnic background to donate blood.

Of course, my knowledge of immunology is about 20 years out of date, but I do remember something about there being about 4 major human blood groups, plus the rhesus factors. There was also a set of antigens known collectively as the "HLA complex" (and I've forgotten what HLA stood for) but, as a rule, you'd only worry about those if you were planning a kidney transplant or something. The blogosphere is a puzzling place sometimes.

Insane Journos' Crime Beat Up

Yesterday's Melbourne Hun showed fine form yesterday, with a double forward turn in the pike position straight into the gutter. Beside a fine muck-rake on Red Symons, we were offered "Insane killers given leave", which informed us that:

CRIMINALLY insane killers are being released from custody to attend weddings, go shopping and take holidays.

Last year, 360 leave applications were granted to 39 inmates, most of them psychotic killers.

This shocking state of affairs has, of course,

"... outraged victims' groups and the State Opposition, which has called for the leave to be halted and the system overhauled."

On page 4, The Hun goes on to present a rogues gallery of inmates "at the state's highest security centre for the criminally insane, Thomas Embling Hospital in Fairfield", with short sketches of their offences naming the psychiatric disorders which got them into Thomas Embling Hospital rather than one of the state's general prisons. Finally, lest we be in any doubt on what the Hun's position is, there's the editorial "This lottery could kill" which concludes:

But the Sunday Herald Sun shares the concerns of many in the community, including advocates of victims and their families, over a scheme that has the potential to be a dangerous lottery. Some patients have disappeared for a day. Garden [a prisoner who escaped while on escorted leave], with a passport he renewed during an earlier supervised outing, one of 40 he had been granted, was on the run for four days.

The [Forensic Leave] panel is gambling with the community's safety.

There are some interesting omissions in The Hun's report. Here are three I spotted:

1. None of the prisoners in their "rogues gallery" are explicitly stated to be included among the 39 included in the leave program. The Hun does report on the escape of "Convicted killer and paranoid schizophrenic Neville Garden" during an escorted visit to Southbank, and the abduction and molestation of a 5 year-old child by Darren Seiler, a patient at State Forensic Services. The Garden incident occurred in March 2001, however we should not underestimate the level of community concern it created because, as the editorial assures us, it is still "fresh in the public's memory". Most Victorians have probably been worrying about it at the back of their minds throughout the whole of the Gulf War. (The Hun is remarkably coy about the exact date of the Seiler incident).

2. The Hun makes no mention of the total number of inmates at Thomas Embling Hospital.

3. Beyond the Garden and Seiler incidents, The Hun produces no fresh cases of "things that have gone horribly wrong" in the administration of the program, or as a result of the program. Instead the focus is on the outrage of victim's advocates.

No mention either, of any of the celebrated crimes that have been committed by people fully in posession of their faculties over the past few years. But when you're a crusading journo, the last thing you need is balance. Nor does it do your case any good to remind your readers that, despite any fears you might be trying to foster, Victoria's crime rate is the lowest of any Australian state or territory.

David/Davina

We're all so used to stereotyping in advertisements these days that we're more or less inured to it. Nonetheless, occasionally you see an ad that includes stereotyping that is just so blatant that it makes you want to fume. The one that's got my goat right now is a coffee ad that I saw on TV the other night.

Apparently some coffee company has decided that those little portion control packs of instant coffee that you find in motel wardrobes are going to be the next big thing for the trendy, inner-city, 25 to 35 demographic, or possibly the over-the-hill 35+ and mortgaged up to the hilt demographic that looks back fondly on the days when they were under 35, trendy and inner city. The ad has a couple of attractive young women sharing coffee and discussing the hostess' new flat-mate, who we are told is very good-looking. Then the flat-mate comes home, and by god, he is very good looking. While coffee is being made for him, he goes to his room to change for his night out: we next see him standing on a trendy, inner city landing but only from the waist down. He is wearing high-heels and a skirt.

I don't know what kind of misogynistic, homophobic toad comes up with this sort of rubbish, but this sort of obvious stereotyping really pisses me off. Not every good-looking man in the world is gay: some of us are straight, thank you very much. Whatever some little toad of an advertising copy writer who can't pull a good-looking chick might think. Whoever this turkey is, he'd be better off lowering his expectations, rather than polluting our airwaves with these obvious attempts to queer the pitch for those of us who are better endowed in the facial aesthetics department. God put ugly men into the world for a reason - to take care of the ugly women. Deal with it. Either that, or get yourself a big jar of vaseline and console yourself with thoughts of the trophy bride you'll be able to afford once they make you a partner in the agency.

DIY Tomahawk Update

There's a new page up on the airframe design problems you can expect to encounter if you decide to build your own cruise missile. No schematics unfortunately - I was looking forward to getting in a good supply of balsa wood, glue, pins and bulldog clips and putting in a productive weekend. Guess I'll just have to wait for the kit.

Dream Diary

I can't help being bored by the ongoing Crean/Beazley stoush. Even so, mug punter that I am, my money's still on Crean to win, by a nose at most.

This flies in the face of the realities of Labor's factional politics, which I first learnt about when I was a member of a Labor Unity (Victorian Right) dominated ALP branch back in the 80s. At one branch meeting the branch president gave the following report on a recent State Conference of the party:

"This conference didn't go well for us, the Left rolled us on a lot of issues."

Everyone nodded, and the deputy president called for questions. There was a moment's silence, then from the back of the room where the alienated leftie members sat, someone asked:

"Excuse me Jack, but just which issues did the Left roll 'us' on?"

"I couldn't tell you that Gummo, I was in the Labor Unity caucus room most of the time," [tr: the back bar of the John Curtin Hotel] "But I do know we got rolled."

Of course this was back in the days before ALP branches started signing up members at weddings, baptisms, funerals and race meetings, and being a rank and file member of the ALP really meant something.

Of the newspaper articles I've read, Barry Donovan's in yesterday's Age sums it up best for me. Zeppo Bakunin, who is closer to being an ALP insider than I ever expect to be - he's actually on speaking terms with his local member - summed it up this way: the New South Wales Right would rather lose an election than yield control of the ALP. Don't expect them to give up if Beazley loses the vote on Monday.

The whole conduct of Beazley's bid stinks, starting with the leaking of the private poll results showing that up to 10 New South Wales members could lose their seats if Labor went to the polls with Crean as leader. The way this was handled shows how little genuine political talent the Sydney mob have. They could have used the information to develop policy and a long-term campaign strategy to win back support: instead, they decided the best way to use the information was to scare the shit out of their own sitting members to push them over to the Beazley side. Basically the threat is, support Beasley or expect to spend the rest of your career in the ALP stacking branches in Bennelong.

This doesn't show a lot of respect for the members concerned, nor for the voters. It's a case of bugger the policy issues, give them big Kim. He knows how to win them over. If Beazley does get up on Monday, I can think of only three reasons for a reasonably sane person to vote for Labor:

1. They may be conniving bastards, but at least they're your conniving bastards and nowhere near as bad as their conniving bastards.

2. You live in a safe Labor seat and, as usual, the sitting candidate is a lot more competent than the Coalition wannabe who's only running to audition for one of the marginals.

3. You don't give a rat's arse any more and the Labor candidate's name was at the top of the ballot paper.

Bored as I am by it, the whole thing bothers me enough to sneak into my dreams. Last night, I had a shocker. I was living somewhere in Sydney and, god knows why, listening to Silver Tonsils on 2UE. He was doing a talk-back session with Simon Crean as guest. There was a call that went something like this:

Tonsils: Our next caller is Jim. What do you want to talk to Simon Crean about Jim?

Jim: I was wondering if Simon remembered appearing on your show back in August 1995, when you asked him about the shoplifting guide in that student newspaper?

Simon: Er ...

Jim: And after Mr Laws got stuck into you, you got onto Jan Wade and told her how she could prosecute the editors of the paper?

Simon: Er ...

Tonsils: Well, I remember Jim, but it's a bit old hat. Do you have anything else to ask Simon Crean?

Jim: Yeah. Mr Crean, if you get to be Prime Minister, are you going to let that turd across the sound-desk push you around again?

Postscript: You can read the original Rabelais article here. Really - just scroll down the page a lot.

Splog

An excerpt from Technorati's Interesting Newcomers Page (yes, I was looking to see if my own blog was listed):

1. G. 29 new blogs 39 blogs 40 links (Cosmos)
2. Brain Flashes 14 new blogs 58 blogs 61 links (Cosmos)
3. .blogdaddy 10 new blogs 37 blogs 50 links (Cosmos)
4. The Internet Topic Exchange 15 new blogs 74 blogs 152 links (Cosmos)
5. Shotput into the Abyss 11 new blogs 36 blogs 41 links (Cosmos)
6. Tiger: Raggin' & Rantin' 9 new blogs 41 blogs 63 links (Cosmos)
7. the dissident frogman 10 new blogs 47 blogs 62 links (Cosmos)
8. Heath Row's Media Diet 11 new blogs 66 blogs 76 links (Cosmos)
9. Brain Flashes 10 new blogs 58 blogs 61 links (Cosmos)
10. Desktopchina Live Page004 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
11. Desktopchina Live Page024 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
12. Desktopchina Live Page008 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
13. Desktopchina Live Page025 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
14. Desktopchina Live Page023 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
15. Desktopchina Live Page031 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
16. Desktopchina Live Page002 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
17. Desktopchina Live Page009 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
18. Desktopchina Live Page016 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
19. Desktopchina Live Page032 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
20. Desktopchina Live Page036 8 new blogs 42 blogs 42 links (Cosmos)
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Thanks to James Russell for this perfect stocking-stuffer for next Christmas. Can hardly wait to see the looks on their faces ...

Palliative Care for Cats

CSL [pron: Seezl], the last of my ex-cats is on her last legs. Between the skin cancer that did for both her ears, the thyroid problem that did for most of her body weight, and the dementia that did for her few traces of good nature, she's been on her last legs for a couple of years anyway. But, now that the crusty discharges have started, the Cheynes-Stokes breathing can't be more than a couple of months away.

Old cats can be difficult to love. The cute little kitten, whose name we got off the old vet supplies box we took her home in, has long since turned into a skanky, smelly and utterly repulsive old moggy of questionable personal hygiene. You discover that the earth-tones in the hall runner (a traditional design from the fabled workshops of distant Dandenong) provide perfect camouflage for last night's attack of cat diarrhoea.

She hasn't been getting too many compliments from passing strangers lately and the friendly enquiries about her breed ("long-haired Australian lop-ear") have stopped. Most people pick up speed when they see her pad down the path, or hear her ingratiating mewl. She's a great deterrent to loiterers with intent.

Soon friends will start their well-meaning and pointed inquiries like surely it would be kinder to have her put down? They'll probably get the same answer they got when they asked about the last moribund cat: she may be smelly, incontinent & unpleasant to get close to, but as long as she isn't suffering and still enjoys rolling around in the sun, there's no good reason to euthanase her. Inconvenience is'nt a reason - it's an excuse. Can you smell cat-poo? I swear, I can smell cat-poo somewhere.

So the last visit to the vet will be put off until she's no longer able to stroll imperiously down the hall and call out for the front door to be opened so that she can get outside to poo on the neighbour's front lawn as all self-respecting cats do. And then call out for the door to be opened again, so that she can get back inside to the food bowl. With luck, she won't have to go to the vet at all, and her last hours will be spent curled up on an old towel in somebody's lap. As long as it's not mine, I don't really mind.

I Wuz Right (Sort Of)

The sometimes impenetrable J-Stro has been having a good gloat in various comments threads over the fact that I squibbed out on my moralising, interminable and inconclusive series of blogs on the recent war, while he, with his superior understanding of geopol, the Bush Administrations's fopo and dopo agendas, and an intellect unclouded by discredited lopo or pomo ideology, produced the only ethico-political theory of the war which yielded a testable hypothesis.

Whether J-Stro's testable hypothesis should be accorded any more respect than Athena Star-Woman's, equally testable prediction, based on the current position of Jupiter, that Leos can expect to meet a tall, dark handsone stranger this week, is questionable. But, for whatever merit there is in these things, here's a prediction I made on March 24:

Ken Parish has an interesting post up Through a glass slightly less darkly, which is attracting a fair bit of comment, some on the subject of Saddam Hussein's weapons of you know what, and when they are likely to be used. As we know that we're talking principally about chemical weapons (such as VX gas) and biological weapons (such as bacillus anthracis) - the nukes seem to have been dropped off the agenda. I'm prepared to say, with a little confidence and a lot of hope that they won't be used. [emphasis added]

Unlike J-Stro's hypothesis, where all the supporting evidence has to be drawn by inference from the statements of White House officials, as interpreted by the media, this one should be easy to refute: just produce one recorded instance where Saddam's chemical or biological weapons were used in Gulf War II. Unfortunately, this doesn't validate the "theory" I used to produce this prediction: derrida derider shot a couple of large holes in its historical basis. Nor is it particularly relevant to the new debate over whether we wuz lied to about the threat of Saddam's weapons in the first place and whether it is acceptable for a democratic government to lie to the electorate. (Or, if you prefer the soft option, whether it is desirable for us, as citizens, to go on electing governments who are so bloody credulous on issues of national security). It's just another piece of the self-indulgent opinionated crap that blogging is really all about.

What's In a Name?

A little googling turns up evidence that, elsewhere in the world at least, the name Phil Ruddock is still one which can be spoken with pride and respect. At Ulster's Ballymena RFC:

Phil Ruddock continues to defy age (and fashion rules) at training, while back row combinations from Whyte, King, Lorimer, Shirley and Crabbe continue to thrive off the possession provided by the front five.

And also in Barnsley, home of Wakefield Juniors, a doughty band of budding coarse fishermen, where Phil is the captain who led his team to victory in the National Junior Angling Association NATIONAL KNOCKOUT:

At the end of the match the weigh in showed Wakefields team captain Phil Ruddock had lead by example and had won his section with 9lb 3oz, Shaun Kearsley also took another section win with 8lbs 11oz, other team members Michael Reeder took second in section, Gareth Ridge a third and Daniel Ibbotson a fourth in section.

and the National Federation of Anglers North East Regional match for junior anglers:

The junior match was a forty-eight pegger, which fished very hard due to the wind, and the canal towing like more like a river, however it was known that the target species was the abundant Gudgeon, if they would feed.
...
As the team results were given it was confirmed Wakefield had secured the win with their four section wins, a section second and section third, a fantastic achievement.
To add further celebrations the individual winners were announced which showed Wakefield were superior on the day.
...
Phil Ruddock was individual fourth with 1kg 460g.

Haloscan ist kaput. Again.

Or Not.

Own Your Own Tomahawk

The ultimate do-it-yourself project:

Some time ago I wrote an article in which I suggested that it would not be difficult for terrorists to build their own relatively sophisticated cruise missiles using off-the-shelf components and materials.

...

... in order to prove my case, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and build a cruise missile in my own garage, on a budget of just US$5,000.

I like to think of this project as the military version of "Junkyard Wars".

...

A detailed level of documentation will be provided to those who qualify and are willing to pay a small subscription for full access to the project diary.

Low Gudgeon in High Dudgeon

One of the great things about being of the right is the franchise it grants on misrepresentation. If you want an example, consider Stanley Gudgeon's recent piece on Pamela Bone. In Monday's Age, under the unfortunate headline "When support for a cause smacks of a new imperialism", Bone wrote:

An email going around contains a petition to the Government of Nigeria, asking it to rescind the death sentence imposed on a young woman, Amina Lawal, for adultery. The email says Lawal (whose baby is proof of her crime under the Sharia law of her state) is to be buried up to her neck and stoned to death this week, the execution having been postponed until her baby was weaned.

There are reasons not to sign it. Another email from Nigerian human rights group Baobab respectfully asks international "friends" to stop the letter campaign. It advises that the information contained in the petition is not only inaccurate but may be damaging this case and others like it.

In bunyip-speak, this translates to:

... Pamela Bone's most recent piece in the Age, in which she pleads for people to stop writing letters in support of Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for the "crime" of adultery.

Too many annoying letters, Bone explains, and the likely result will be that the savages get even more upset, their resolve will stiffen and, if the pleas really get their goat, authorities may even bring forward the date of the execution in order to grind a thumb in the eye of civilised sensibilities. We must be cultural attuned, the columnist preaches, allow Sharia law to have its way and hope for the best. No women have yet been stoned, so Bone reckons Lawal has an excellent chance of winning her appeal and escaping unscathed. The problem isn't Lawal's persecutors, its those yapping Westerners raising such a fuss. To support her point - at least that is what the Professor thinks she's trying to do, because the column is even more illogical than it is disjointed - she cites the $15 billion the United States is making available to combat AIDS in Africa. Apparently this could be a bad thing - quite possibly "cultural imperialism", which may be even worse in Bone's eyes than burying women up to their necks and whacking them with big rocks.

As paraphrases go, this is one of Stanley's more accurate: he at least manages to cover most of the major points in Bone's article, even though he is viewing it through crap coloured glasses. To show how well the Professor has captured Bone's argument, here's the section of Bone's article dealing with Ms Lawal's current situation:

"Although the stress on Ms Lawal is obviously considerable and awful, she is not in immediate danger of being stoned," Baobab says. Her legal process is still several steps away from the final option of appeal to Nigeria's Supreme Court. So far, not one such appeal taken up by Baobab, with the support of women's groups in Nigeria, has been lost.

If there is an immediate danger to the women under sentence of stoning or flogging, says Baobab, it is that local politicians or vigilante groups will carry out the sentences to defy international opinion. In one case in which a woman was flogged, despite an appeal pending and despite an international letter-writing campaign, the local governor boasted of his resistance to "these letters from infidels".

Besides, the human rights groups do not want pardons for the women; they want the convictions and sentences imposed by local religious courts to be overturned by higher courts, to show they are wrong in law.

Bone's position, the Professor assures us, represents a complete back flip from the position she took in this article, published in The Age on November 16, 2002. Here Bone says:

Islamic fundamentalist groups are angry about having the Miss World pageant in Nigeria, branding it a "parade of nudity". Well, let them be, because however ideologically unsound beauty contests might be to some (they don't bother this feminist), this represents a great victory by women over religious fundamentalism.

Yet on Monday, according to the Professor's precis, she's taking a typical lefty post-colonialist, post-modernist, post-macchiato position on the same issue. Perhaps he overlooked this paragraph:

Culture is not sacred. And as Doris Lessing observed recently, customs are never as strongly valued as when they are about the subjection of women. There are many progressive men and women in Africa who know that cultural practices have largely been dreamed up by men to suit men, and must be changed, not only to stop the AIDS pandemic but because justice demands it.

And Bone's muddled position on the US funding to combat AIDS? Here it is, more or less:

Yet the difference between support and cultural imperialism can be difficult to judge. The US Senate recently passed a $US15 billion($A23 billion) bill to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa, which included funding to teach "feminism" to African men. The money will be used, in part, to fund programs to reduce sexual violence and coercion, child marriage and polygamy.

...

The Bush Administration's commitment to the empowerment of women would have more credibility, however, had it not been cutting funding to any programs that might give information about abortion as part of their service. The fact that a large part of the new money is to be used to promote sexual abstinence also gives rise to suspicions that its main interest is in pursuing its own conservative social agenda globally.

Many African men do need to be taught feminism. But perhaps it is African women, rather than men in Washington, who are best suited to teach them.

In support of his case against Bone, Stanley links to snopes.com where he found this description of the rioting which forced the Miss World pageant to be moved out of Nigeria:

...an outbreak of violence between Muslims and Christians (triggered in part by opposition to the Miss World content, which has been characterized by fundamentalist Islamic groups as a "parade of nudity" likely to undermine the fight against AIDS) spread to the Nigerian capital of Abuja -- planned site of the beauty pageant -- and left over 100 people dead and several hundred more injured, the Miss World pageant organizers moved the event to London instead, thereby eliminating one of the Nigerian federal government's prime motivations for preventing the execution of Amina's death sentence. Without a reversal of the ruling by the Sharia court ... preventing her execution will require intervention by force, an act that has the potential to plunge Nigeria into civil war.

Don't be bothered by the little dots: Stanley isn't playing silly buggers with elisions this time. On the other hand, it appears that Stanley stopped reading at the end of that paragraph. Here's the next paragraph:

Would sending letters to the Sharia appeals court in Katsina (the one which has already heard her appeal and rejected it) help? This is even more unlikely: Muslim fundamentalists deeply resent Western interference of any sort at any time, so telling them the world will be angry with them unless they reverse themselves isn't going to be the carrot that will inspire this particular donkey. They believe the teachings of the Koran and their interpretations and applications of them are entirely above matters of world opinion -- to them, they are answering to God, and nothing may be placed ahead of that.

And an update from the bottom of the page:

Update: A revised petition circulated in mid-2003 claimed Amina was due to be executed by stoning on 3 June 2003. This information is wrong: 3 June is the date Amina is next scheduled to appear before the state Sharia court of appeal. For now, her death sentence remains suspended until January 2004 to give her time to raise her child until it is old enough to be weaned.

Perhaps in his haste to get to the meaty bits, he also overlooked this while scrolling down the page:

Will signing a petition help the cause? In all likelihood it won't. The person to whom the missive is being addressed, Olusegun Obasanjo, the President of Nigeria, is both opposed to the sentence and almost powerless to do anything about it. He has said that under Nigeria's federal system of government the mainly Muslim northern states have every right to reintroduce the Sharia code into their penal law, and that while he will weep for Amina and for Nigeria itself if her execution is carried out, he will not overturn the finding of that court.

And also the link to this page on why Internet petitions in general are a waste of time.

Finally, let's look at some information from Baobob, the Nigerian human rights group Bone refers to and which the Professor cites, after his enthusiastic discovery that Baobob clearly speaks Bone's language. Here's the Professor's quotation from their web-site:

Dominant colonialist discourses and the mainstream international media have presented Islam (and Africa) as the barbaric and savage Other. Please do not buy into this. Accepting stereotypes that present Islam as incompatible with human rights not only perpetuates racism but also confirms the claims of right-wing politico-religious extremists in all of our contexts.

And here's something he skipped - an example of how an international letter writing campaign led to the flogging of another Nigerian woman under Sharia law:

Dangers of Letter Writing Campaigns?

However, if there is an immediate physical danger to Ms. Lawal and others, it is from vigilante and political further (over)reaction to international attempts at pressure. This has happened already in the case of Bariya Magazu, the unmarried teenager convicted of zina (extra-marital sex) and sentenced to flogging in Zamfara in 1999. Ms. Magazu’s sentence was quite illegally brought forward with no notice, despite the earlier assurances of the trial judge that the sentence would not be carried out for at least a year. She was told the night before that it would be carried out very early the next morning (and thus had no way of contacting anyone for help even if this unschooled and poor rural teenager had access to a telephone or organizing knowledge and experience), whilst the state bureaucracy had been instructed to obstruct and was physically refusing to take the appeal papers from BAOBAB’s lawyers. The extra-legal carrying out of the sentence was not despite national and international pressure; it was deliberately to defy it. The Governor of Zamfara State boasted of his resistance to "these letters from infidels" – even to sniggering over how many letters he had received. Thus, we would like you to recognise that an international protest letter campaign is not necessarily the most productive way to act in every situation. On the contrary, women’s rights defenders should assess potential backlash effects before devising strategies.

I think further comment from me would be superfluous.

Getaway with Mark

Gareth Parker has posted a short excerpt from this cheery travel piece* by Mark Steyn. Here's a bit of local colour from Mark's visit to the town of Rutba:

But just what exactly was deteriorating? As my groaning table and the stores along Main Street testified, there was plenty of food in town. Was it the water? I made a point of drinking the stuff everywhere I went in a spirited effort to pick up the dysentery and cholera supposedly running rampant. But I remain a disease-free zone.

Obviously, Mark is a traveller, rather than a tourist. A tourist looking to catch cholera or dysentary in Iraq would have done a little preparation, perhaps checked out a couple of brochures at the local travel agent, rather than swanning off to a foreign country totally unprepared on the basis that this is the best way to learn about the country. Had he done so, he might have saved himself the pointless sojourn in Rutba, charming as it might have been, and gone straight to Basra where, if this MSNBC report is correct, he could have had a very satisfactory cholera and dysentary experience:

The Iraqi city of Basra made headlines recently when a deadly wave of cholera swept the area. But it was only the first problem in a summer health-care crisis that will get worse in the coming weeks. Even before the war, water filtration plants across the nation were in a state of disrepair. Patched up with second-hand parts, they chugged along with machinery purchased in better days. The war delivered the coup de grace. Many of those that survived the bombing and the fighting—and quite a few didn’t—were crippled by looters after it. In recent days, as the heat has crept up into the low 100s, so has the reliance of locals in towns across the country on the ancient, sewage-choked waterways of the Tigres and Euphrates rivers. The impact on Iraq’s children has been devastating.

The border city of Usaybah, on the banks of the Euphrates up by Syria, is typical. “There is no water except from the river and there is nobody to help me,” said Jossa Jamel as she sat with her infant son, who was stricken with diarrhea and started vomiting five days ago. “What should we do? There is no other way.” Each day in recent weeks, Hamdi al-Aloosh’s staff at Usaybah Hospital has treated as many as 30 cases of dysentery. And almost every day, he loses a child. “Everything is destroyed and the pumps are 25 years old,” al-Aloosh explained. Lately, his doctors have begun to notice another disturbing trend: cases of typhoid, another deadly water-borne killer, may soon rise to epidemic proportions.

* - registration required.

Update: I just found this page on Rutba. For what it's worth:

Rutba is a dirty little desert town which has grown up around a border post. Because although it lies some 60 km inside Iraq, the open desert roads mean all traffic in and out of Iraq to Jordan pass through Rutba.

Make of that what you will.

Santoro Watch

Last week I developed a bit of a fascination with Senator Santo Santoro's performance in Monday's sitting of the Senate Committee on Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. I did intend to go through every piece of evidence [of ABC bias] that Senator Santoro presented but, as usually happens, the BlogGeist has moved on to other things. In the interests of wrapping up the Where There's Muck series, I've gone through the rest of last week's Hansards for the committee, to prepare a summary of the good Senator's contributions to the committee proceedings for the rest of the week.

On Tuesday, when the committee dealt mostly with matters relating to Telstra, Senator Santoro put the following questions to witnesses:

On Wednesday when the committee heard from the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Sports Drug Agency, Senator Santoro offered the following insightful comments:

On Thursday, it was the turn of the Department of the Environment and Heritage [to come] under Senator Santoro's microscope:

And finally, on Friday, Senator Santoro finished up a brilliant week with a few light-hearted interjections:

Ken's Back

Ken Parish is back on line, with a third incarnation of Troppo Armadillo. Go visit Ken's new blog so that he can get lots of traffic and feed some of it through to me.

Locally, comments are back too, but for how long is anybody's guess.

US Senate opens Iraq weapons probe.

No comment.

Bummed Out

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm beginning to find this page a real downer:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /troppoarmadillo/ on this server.
Apache/1.3.27 Server at cyberfuddle.com Port 80

This one too:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /infinitebabble/ on this server.
Apache/1.3.27 Server at cyberfuddle.com Port 80

What's really depressing is that Ken came round commenting today and I suspect (perhaps a little immodestly) that, if Troppo was on-line, I'd be getting some much needed linkage. So today, at least, I have a purely self-centred reason to hope that the cyberfuddle domain is back on line soon.

There are one or two other blogs that have gone strangely quiet lately, but I'm not going to name them. It might be tempting fate.

Read this, then this and finally this (permalinks bloggered as usual - scroll down to: "One of the great things about being of the left is the franchise it grants on inconsistency ...").

No Comments

Haloscan appears to be down again. I've taken comments off-line for now, so that pages will load within a reasonable time.

Update (Tueday, 3 June): they've buggered off again. Bloody Haloscan!

More ABC Bias Revealed

A quick trawl of last Firday's AM archives turned up this example of anti-American bias that Senator Alston may have missed. At the end of a report on the latest Chinese government initiative to control the spread of SARS, John Taylor said:

JOHN TAYLOR: China knows a lot about executions. It leads the world in killing its own citizens. Many human rights groups say it annually kills more people than the rest of the world put together, and not only people convicted of capital offences are executed.

This is scurrilous. As we know, there are plenty of State Governors, District Attorneys and Judges in the US who are proud of their willingness to execute some of the citizenry to discourage the rest from killing each other. But, according to John Taylor, rather than the world's greatest democracy being the world leader in this area, it's one of the world's few remaining communist regimes. This is not merely anti-American: it's anti-democratic.

Of course I may be wrong about this. It may be that we currently have a round of trade negotiations going on with the Chinese. If so, I'm prepared to withdraw the charge of anti-American bias unreservedly: Taylor's endorsement of China's leadership in this area of human rights is consistent with the nation's best economic interests and probably just the sort of responsible reporting that the Federal Government wants to see more of from the ABC.

Double Backflip With a One and a Half Twist

I've reconsidered my position on the bill that the US Government has presented for the RAAF's use of its bombs during the recent war. I think, on the whole, it's quite reasonable that our government should pay for them.

The situation is analogous to one that some parents may have faced: you send your brat round to play with the neighbour's ankle biter and then get news that, in a moment of over-enthusiasm, the little bugger dismembered his host's GI Joe and melted an entire battalion of plastic soldiers into a scorched green blob. Under such circumstances I think any decent, responsible parent would feel constrained to make good the neighbour's losses and lay down some firm guidelines on how junior was to behave when playing with other kids' toys.

So it's time to stop complaining, and stump up the money. And time for Defence Minister Robert Hill to get onto the RAAF and let them know that, next time the US Air Force invites them over to play with the heavy ordinance, they're to make sure that it all gets returned in good working order. As a true friend, it's the least we can do.

I've also reconsidered my post on Hugh Mackay's call for our community's intelligent people to recognise their obligations to society, get off their arses and do something for the benefit of their fellow Australians. It was brought on by a story Zeppo Bakunin told at last Thursday's trivia quiz.

Way back in his misspent youth, Zeppo worked at the Tramways for a while. One day, while he was on a break, one of his colleagues - a gnarled senior trammie of many years experience - turned to Zeppo and said: "You went to Uni didn't you?"

"Yes" Zeppo confessed.

"Y'do Physics?"

"Only first year." answered Zeppo, a little apprehensive.

"D'you study any Relativity?"

"A bit." Zeppo answered, a little more apprehensive.

"Good. Perhaps you can help me out." His interrogator said, and produced a sheet of paper on which he scribbled out a string of incomprehensible equations of the

dt = {2L/c}*{1/[1-(v^2/c^2)]^0.5}

variety. Pointing to one he said: "The thing is, I don't understand this transformation here."

I think this bloke is a good example of the sort of person Hugh was complaining about. If he'd gotten off his arse and done something with his intellectual resources he might have made something of his life. Instead, he was content to waste his life as a trammie, occasionally pestering the better educated with pointless questions about the Theory of Relativity. What a waste.

Local News

I did a bad thing on Saturday night: I stole the front page of the Moreland Leader from the local fish and chip shop. The front page story was about a local planning dispute that may end up in Victoria's Supreme court, thanks to the intervention of Planning Minister Mary Delahunty:

Minister blocks plan

A RARE 11th hour amendment by Planning Minister Mary Delahunty could signal the end of a five-year battle to stop a controversial townhouse development in Brunswick East.

Last Friday Ms Delahunty allowed Moreland Council to amend its planning scheme just hours before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal was to consider an application for a second townhouse at 42 St Phillip St.

The site-specific amendment prevents a second building on the property.

"The Bracks Government does not intervene lightly in the planning process," Ms Delahunty said. "In this case it became necessary to take action ... the matter raised issues of fairness and public interest, which are grounds for intervention."

The decision ends five years of protesting by affected neighbours Steve and Ronnie Whitmore.

The wrangle began when the council refused an application for a dual townhouse development. The tribunal upheld the decision on appeal in 1999. [my emphasis]

This is where the fun really starts, if the events that followed can really be described as fun. I'm not going to comment more than that at the moment: Victorian property developers can be a touchy lot. Just ask that pensioner couple who had to spend $10,000 or so on an advertisment in The Age apologising to a property developer for various comments they made in the objections they made to their local council to one of his developments. It was either that or face the cost of defending a libel action in the Supreme Court. On with our story:

Property owner Vito Bartucca then changed the property title from two to one, which allowed him to build a two-storey townhouse on part of the site. Under planning laws single dwellings can be built without a permit on lots greater than 300 sq m [my emphasis]

You can probably guess where the Mr Bartucca put the townhouse. Here's how the Moreland Leader describes it:

The townhouse was squeezed on to one half of the block closest to the Whitmores, overshadowing their 140-year-old Victorian cottage.

It infuriated the Whitmores, who camped on the front steps of Parliament HOuse but failed to persuade then Planning Minister John Thwaites to intervene.

The next section doesn't really require any comment from me either. If you sussed out that the first townhouse was going to be placed according to the original development plan, it's likely that you've already more or less worked out the next bit too:

The current application, lodged with the council last May, was for a single storey dwelling on the vacant half of the block. It was on appeal because the council took more than 60 days to process the application Outside the hearing, Ms Whitmore said she believed justice had been done.

The Whitmores may be (more or less) happy, but the same can't be said for Mr Bartucca. After reporting that he might pursue costs against Moreland Council, the Moreland Leader sounds this ominous note:

The Bartuccas [sic] can also appeal the legality of Planning Minister Mary Delahunty's decision to the Supreme Court and ask for the tribunal hearing to be reinstated.

For some reason, the whole thing reminds me of the "Wade House" case. Well, now that I've blogged it, I suppose I'd better see what I can do about sneaking the purloined page back into the fish and chip shop, where it belongs.

What I'm Reading This Week

I picked up Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil at the local library yesterday. It's incomplete: there are a couple of damaged pages early in the book. Here, for example is the first paragraph of Chapter II as it appears in my library's copy:

n of Karl Adolf Eichmann and Maria nee Scheefer-
a suburb of Buenos Aires on the evening of May 11,
Israel nine days later, brought to trial in the District
alem on April 11, 1961, stood accused on fifteen
er with others" he had committed crimes against the
, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during
riod of the Nazi regime and especially during the pe-
Second World War. The Nazis and Nazi Collaborators
nt) Law of 1950, under which he was tried, provides
erson who has committed one of these ... offenses ...
to the death penalty". To each count Eichmann pleaded:
guilty in the sense of the indictment."

Reading on, it's pretty obvious that there's something crucial missing on the torn off corner of paper - so if anyone can provide me with the full text, I'd appreciate it a lot. Well, a bit anyway. What has me stumped is how, short of someone running out of matches and needing to light their cigarette off the gas heater, that big a corner can get torn off the page of a book in the first place.

You Drop It, You Pay for It

news.com reports that:

Australia is to be billed several million dollars by the United States for bombs dropped on Iraq.

Weeks after George W. Bush's public thank you to John Howard, the bills are due to arrive – including the cost of US food eaten by some Diggers.

What has me puzzled is this section of the report:

The Australian Defence Force is now being asked to share the costs for its part in toppling Saddam Hussein under the "user-pays" principle of modern warfare.

Australian jet fighters fired a number of US laser-guided bombs – each worth a five-figure sum.

The F/A-18 Hornets flew 350 combat missions, dropping 122 precision-guided weapons.

ADF officials will not specify the types or quantity of bombs dropped.

But defence analysts believe they include US-owned MK84s and GBU-series 220kg and 907kg weapons, worth $28,800 and $35,900 respectively. [My emphasis]

Does this mean that we're being billed for US-owned bombs that the RAAF dropped for the US military, or that we got them on one of those "90 Days Interest Free" deals or what? It's obviously too late to argue about the cooling off period but, given the amounts involved we should at least insist on having the cost of any unexploded bombs that we may have dropped taken off the bill.

For the Record: James Russell beat me to this item by a good two days. Excuse me while I go wipe the egg off my face.

Gubernatorial Speculations

I think it's well past time that I put in a comment or two on the Hollingworth debacle. There's not much I can say on the conduct of the various players in this political spectacle that hasn't been said repeatedly elsewhere, so instead I'll just jump into the general speculation on who the next Governor-General will be, with maybe a comment or two on the constitutional issues, which are being canvassed around the place, sometimes where you'd least expect it.

There's been some comment that the way Peter Hollingworth was hounded out of the job will make it difficult to find a successor. The idea is, that given the level of scrutiny that the next Gubernatorial appointee's past life will be subjected to, no prominent Australian in his (or her) right mind would go near the job. To be nominated as the next Governor-General, it is argued, is as good as being handed the chalice from the palace. Or was it the vessel with the pestle? The flagon with the dragon perhaps. Whatever - I'm getting side-tracked. Personally I'm indifferent on this score: anything that helps to prevent Rene Rivkin or Rodney Adler from taking up residence at Yarralumla is fine by me. Still, in the interests of putting this behind us, it would be best that the next Governor-General be someone who won't be shifted from the office in the way that Peter Hollingworth has.

I doubt that John Howard will take up the other suggestion that has been floated, that the new Governor-General should be endorsed by a two-thirds majority of Parliament. As a constitutional monarchist, I'm sure that he will recognise this for what it is: an attempt to sneak in the minimalist republic, rejected at the 1999 referendum, through the back door. It's more likely in my view that he will take one of those bold steps forward into the past that typify the Howard style of politics.

Let's not forget that John Howard is, as George Bush said, a man of steel. He showed, in taking us into the war with Iraq that he is prepared to go against public opinion when moved by personal conviction so it's reason able to expect that he will be equally firm and resolved when it comes to the much less difficult issue of appointing a Governor-General. My tip is that, in line with his monarchist beliefs, John Howard will give us a Governor-General who truly represents the Queen. An English Governor-General, to represent our English Queen. Very soon, Australia will have an Iron Lady to match our Man of Steel, Baroness Thatcher herself.

You may call this idea far-fetched, but it has a lot going for it, both from John Howard's point of view and the Queen's. History will remember John Howard as the first Prime Minister to appoint a woman to the job of Governor-General: this might make up for his failure to put his personal stamp on the Constitution with the new "comfortable and relaxed" preamble. The idea that Lady Margaret could be hounded out of office by the media is, frankly, laughable. And for the Queen there would be some payback for all the scoldings she allegedly received from the Baroness back in the days when she was a mere Prime Minister.

Afterthought: if you're wondering why the Stalin joke is missing, it's because plenty of other people have used it already.

Thanks to Stewart kelly for this illustration of human stupidity:

A Florida woman is preparing to sue the producers of Jim Carrey's new film "Bruce Almighty" after being inundated with calls from people seeking God at a phone number given in the movie.

It's about time that somebody was held to account for the number of dickheads there are in the world.

Minor Quandary

News that boynton's trivia team is between venues has brought on a small personal dilemma. Like blogging, the pub trivia quiz is a valuable outlet for formidably bright people who coast through life under-utilising their intellectual resources, and I know from personal experience that prolonged periods of trivia withdrawal can be as difficult to endure as those occasional periods when you desperately want to blog on something - anything - but can find little intelligent to say. Yes that's obviously a petard so go ahead, hoist away.

Here's the problem: I do the trivia thing once a week myself (with the occasional week off when I'm feeling totally disgruntled with the other members of the team - working out how it hangs together at all, let alone well enough to win occasionally would make a good doctoral research project for an up and coming group psychologist) and the generous, sympathetic thing to do would be to fire off an e-mail in Ms Boynton's general direction with details of my own trivia venue. On the other hand, the competition is already pretty stiff (especially when the big prizes are on offer) so self-interest and team solidarity (such as there is of it) weigh against doing the Mr Nice Guy bit. It's probably too late for tonight's quiz anyway, so I've got another 7 days or so to think it over.

Scratchback

Mark at infiniteBabble serves it up to Phil Ruddock.

Where There's Muck (3)

There's just time to correct a minor omission in Where There's Muck (1) before I start serious work for the day. Take this exchange between Senator Santoro (Liberal, Queensland) and Russell Balding:


Senator SANTORO: Thank you. Are you aware that Mr Uechtritz is on the board of the CEW Bean Foundation, which was established to honour CEW Bean and to commemorate Australian war reporting?

Mr Balding: Yes.

Senator SANTORO: If in fact you find out that it is Mr Uechtritz’s view that the military are lying bastards, do you believe it is appropriate for him to be on the board of the CEW Bean Foundation?

Mr Balding: Again, I would like to look at that in the context of those comments and what was said.

Senator SANTORO: If you found that they were as offensive as some Australians find them, would you think -

Mr Balding: It would not be my decision; that would be a decision for the board of that foundation.

So I need to add "Max Uechtritz holds offensive opinions which make him unfit to hold a position on the board of the CEW Bean Foundation" to Senator Santoro's charges against Max Uechtritz. I'm not sure what this has to do with ABC finances or the Budget Estimates process - offhand I'd say bugger all. I suspect it was introduced into the committee's business under the long-standing bipartisan convention that unsubstantiated personal smears are normal business for any Parliamentary session.

Update: you can check out the CEW Bean Foundation here.

Where There's Muck (2)

Putting together a precis of Senator Santoro's various charges and innuendos about bias at the ABC is turning out to be more work than I realised I was getting myself into. Take this little exchange between Senator Santoro and Russell Balding:

Senator SANTORO: I am grateful for your assistance. I want to perhaps take up the challenge of my esteemed colleague Senator Conroy and talk about other issues relating to bias and balance. On the issue of balance and objectivity in ABC news and current affairs, I would like to get your comments on a number of issues. On 15 April last year, Four Corners ran a story that it headlined "To deter or deny." The program aired allegations that electric cattle prods had been used in a detention centre. What evidence did Four Corners have that cattle prods had been used on detainees? Did the ABC verify this allegation with the relevant authorities? Does the ABC today stand by that allegation?

Mr Balding: Can I take that on notice.

Of course I couldn't resist taking a look at the program transcript, where you will indeed find allegations of the use of electric batons, but not in detention centres. The precise allegation, made by a number of asylum seekers, was that they were used by the Australian Defence Forces during Operation Relex:

MAN 4 (translation): When the commandoes came into the ship, they covered their faces.

They put electric batons against the badges on their shoulders.

When the wires touched them, there was a spark so we could see they were electric batons.

DEBBIE WHITMONT: This family refused to leave.

They say they were hit with an electric baton.

WOMAN 3 (translation): It was like a black stick.

About this size.

(Indicates a point up to her elbow.)

When they pulled it out, they first hit the shoulders.

They had badges on their shoulders.

When it hit, it gave off electricity.

Immediately after this segment, the program included these remarks from Defence Minister Robert Hill:

SENATOR ROBERT HILL, MINISTER FOR DEFENCE: At your request, I asked the Defence Force whether they use such equipment and I have been advised that they neither have it nor use it.

As for the ABC's current position on these allegations, there's this update page on the 4 Corners web-site.

I'll have to be disciplined about this, otherwise even the most perfunctory background checks on Senator Santoro's allegations are going to seriously interfere with my inadequate work ethic. Still, there's a certain perverse pleasure in finding a senator who's a worse committee performer than George Brandis who played such a memorable part in the Senate Inquiry into a Certain Maritime Incident.

Where There's Muck (1)

Bias in the ABC looks like being the hot topic for the next couple of days, at least as far as the Ozbloggeist is concerned. If you're wondering just what goods Senator Alston has to back up his claim of anti-US bias a good place to start looking is page 32 of this transcript of Monday's proceedings of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Committee [PDF file]. It's all in Senator Santoro's "questions" to ABC Managing Director Russell Balding.

In yet another cheesy and insultingly obvious attempt to get linkage, I've gone over the earlier questions, to collect together all the muck that Senator Santoro has raked up on Max Uechtritz, the ABC’s Director of News and Current Affairs. I'm even going to try to present it without comment.

At the second annual Newsworld Asia conference in Singapore last August, Uechtritz remarked, "We now know for certain that only three things in life are certain: death, taxes and the fact that the military are lying bastards."

Uechtritz also said, at the same conference, "The lessons of war? So much technology, so many outlets, so much ignorance."

According to Senator Santoro, Uechtritz’s predetermined view about the military being lying bastards found a loud echo in the ABC’s coverage of the Iraq war.

According to a November 2001 bulletin of the Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Mass Media project, Uechtritz attended a session at a Barcelona conference which examined

... the extent to which the rights of asylum-seekers, internally displaced people and refugees are catered for by the media, and consider how broadcasters can communicate the complexities of their amazing stories without losing audiences or exacerbating internal and international tensions.

In a report on the Barcelona conference The Guardian said:

Max Uechtritz, director of news and current affairs at the ABC network in Australia, pointed out that at least 1,000 fewer people had died in New York than perished in Srebrenica, when "people were taken out and shot" in an even more horrific manner than the instant deaths on September 11. "Because it was a western capital, the scale seemed bigger," he said.

Uechtritz also attended the Eurasian Media Forum 2002 held in Almaty, Kazakhstan in April 2002. He was also listed on the program as a participant in a session titled "The role of media in international conflict."

Uechtritz weighs the same as a duck therefore he must be made of wood.

This is Plain Ridiculous

Over the weekend I decided it was time to take a break from reading the sort of crappy books that others insist that you must read before your opinions on current issues are worth considering and refresh my memory of an old favourite On Certainty by that Wittgenstein bloke. It seemed like a good idea at the time: I was less likely to have one of those waspish fits of bad temper that end with the book cringing in the corner of the room, fearful that you're going to fling it at the wall again. Also, as it's my copy of On Certainty, it's free of those irritatingly cryptic marginalia like "!!", "??" "How true!" and pointless random underlinings that some idiots feel compelled to add to the text of library books for the edification of later readers. I was having a good time, till I got to this bit:

102. Might I not believe that once, without knowing it, perhaps in a state of unconsciousness, I was taken far away from the earth - that other people know this, but do not mention it to me? But this would not fit into the rest of my convictions at all. Not that I could describe the system of these convictions. Yet my convictions do form a system, a structure.

A couple of pages later, Ludwig is musing on whether anyone has ever been on the moon. Now, while Wittgenstein is, or at least used to be, my favourite philosopher there are limits to how much slack I'm prepared to cut even a favourite philosopher in the interests of a so-called fair-minded reading. While he might be on the money on the subject of the impossibility of anyone ever being on the moon it's difficult to read the remarks I've cited above without calling to mind all the solid anecdotal evidence that sometimes unconscious people really do find themselves far away from the earth, suffering painful and humiliatingly intrusive physical examinations. So while Ludwig's scenario might have appeared ludicrous in the 1950s, to be skeptical that one might be taken away from the earth while unconscious makes as much sense in the modern world as clinging to the belief that crop circles are the work of human beings.

It's disappointing, because I was hoping that reading Wittgenstein might give me the opportunity to produce one of those more cerebral posts which I'm apparently capable of. Or at least occasionally. I might even, so I mistakenly thought, have a chance to say something favourable about a book for a change. Instead I'm left with the conclusion that as a philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein would have made a very good hospital porter. Perhaps I have an attitude problem or something.

Help Wanted

I spent this weekend off-line, with only the rainforest edition of The Age for company. So I was a little nervous this morning when I took my first plunge into the blogosphere: if Tim Blair or Stanley Gudgeon had picked up on this crie du coeur from Hugh Mackay, all I'd be left with to start the week's blogging is the mystery of why I have 3 referrals listed from the ABC News Home Page.

It seems that Hugh has had one of those unpleasant moments of self-discovery that confront us all eventually, and he's not too happy about it. He's realised that there may be people in the population who are more intelligent than himself. Here's what he has to say about them:

But there's another payoff from genetic roulette that is too often confused with achievement: intelligence. One of the craziest features of our culture is the way we rate intelligent people as superior to unintelligent people. We treat intelligent people as elite creatures needing to be "developed" and "accelerated"; we speak disparagingly of unintelligent people as "stupid", "brainless" or "losers".

By definition, more than half the population has "average" intelligence or less. Unfortunately, many people of above-average intelligence are not quite smart enough to realise that their intelligence was handed to them, just like their height.

The issue is not how intelligent you are, but what you do with what you've got. Formidably bright people who coast through life, under-utilising their intellectual resources, squander a valuable genetic gift. Unlike beauty, it's a gift that could be used to benefit those who, because of their more modest intellect, find it tough just coping with the demands of everyday life.

If you're a formidably bright person who coasts through life, under-utilising their intellectual resources, you could probably do worse with your abilities than to ghost-write Hugh's future columns for him. Unfortunately, there's no E-Mail address at the bottom of Hugh's article, but you can probably reach him (eventually) here.